While working on a particular file, such as an artwork, designers use a number of different settings in a software application to build and edit their work. These settings define the environment used for the particular artwork file. For example, designers working in Adobe Illustrator may use different brushes libraries and symbols libraries for different artwork files. In addition, designers working on a print job may use different swatches libraries or designers working on a multilingual artwork may use different glyph sets.
When opening an artwork, the data of the artwork is loaded and is made available to the designer, for example, for editing. However, certain settings are not stored, and are therefore not available to the designer upon opening the artwork file. As a result, to restore the environment previously used with the artwork, these settings must be recalled by the designer and manually applied to the application environment, using an interface to the application.
For example, a designer may want to work at home on an artwork created at their office. Downloading Operating System settings and preferences does not restore all of the software specific or artwork file-specific environment settings. For example, file-specific settings, such as relevant workspace, brushes library, and swatches have to be found among all downloaded settings and loaded manually. Recalling and finding the relevant settings from the entire set can be very time-consuming.
Sometimes a designer may work on multiple artworks for multiple clients. Every time the designer switches from one artwork to another, the designer has to manually reselect the environment settings for the new artwork. Accordingly, switching between projects is very inefficient.
To change an artwork previously worked on, a designer has to recall, for example, brushes libraries, color settings, composite font, etc.—the file-specific settings.
In some instances, a designer sends their work for review to one or more other team members or to a team lead. Teammates need to learn and manually set the brushes, libraries, and other settings to make changes. They might also unknowingly use unwanted symbols, which are present in another library not used for the artwork being reviewed. For example, after a junior designer finishes his work on a publication and sends the work to his team lead for review, the team lead needs to figure out which brushes library the junior designer used to make the design.